00:02:30.340would you tell us a little bit about where you are who you are help us help us see you for those
00:02:36.040of us who can't I can see your smiling face but tell us more thank you well do I ever want an
00:02:43.440introduction beyond that I mean that really if I change my bio immediately thank you so much
00:02:50.700especially the audacity that is my goal and absolutely and the work that I do in this world
00:02:59.200I'm very happy to be here. Also, just for folks listening, Bex Mui is how you say my name,
00:03:04.760she and her pronouns. And yeah, I'm called to this work in so many ways. And it has come through
00:03:10.840an education advocacy lens for me. I was a teacher for a long time. I think all of that work is
00:03:17.200service work. And as many folks do, as many folks with marginalized identities do, we kind of
00:03:24.480represent the change we want to see, we end up putting in that extra work to try to make sure
00:03:29.880that the young people that model our identities have what they need and that we might have a space
00:03:35.080in the systems we're a part of. And that really led me to the work that I've been doing, as you
00:03:40.500mentioned, for a long time now, many years now. And my work, I think of it in two different buckets.
00:03:48.540So one bucket is advocacy, right? Looking at queer and trans advocacy in many systems, education as one of them, but the ways in which we can, I can kind of hold, I call it like ministry with folks, whether they be admin, teachers, families, you know, individuals who want to make a more queer and transive and trans inclusive space for themselves.
00:04:11.040I do that work and then my other bucket is working more directly with the queer and trans community
00:04:17.220especially POC in that community and how do we uplift ourselves our spiritual selves our
00:04:23.600spiritual work and understand you know our own magic yeah thanks for that summary I think that
00:04:31.780you did a better job than I possibly could have of drawing attention to this the two worlds that
00:04:38.060you walk these two spaces where you're doing a lot of healing and a lot of of outpouring and
00:04:45.400where that comes from the the like building these things that that weren't there before
00:04:49.840weren't there when we were kids how are you coping this is this is like pandemic era crisis era0.88
00:04:57.500taking on a lot of fucking healing work how are you uh thank you you know honestly i owe0.82
00:05:05.140some of this work to the pandemic, to the mandatory break and inter-world weaving that0.97
00:05:18.660became possible, especially I'm an Aries, I'm cap rising, I have a never-ending to-do list and
00:05:27.820love to get things done. And I was really able to create distraction-filled worlds for myself
00:05:32.820in ways that shelter in place really made it impossible.
00:05:36.980And I will say, I think that it gave so much of that,
00:05:42.120the things that I needed to do in my inner world.0.88
00:06:24.300I maybe for the first time have a better understanding
00:06:27.800of my inner world and the value of it.
00:06:33.540And that's why we use the word spiritual, right? You use the word spiritual. Can you tell me what
00:06:39.480that, tell us what that means to you, that word spiritual? It seems really nebulous, depending on
00:06:44.580who you talk to, what that word might mean. Oh, yes, absolutely. So House of Our Queer, where I do
00:06:52.140spiritual community and offerings, it has sort of my own spiritual center foundations for it. And so
00:07:00.160it is my weaving path. It includes, I was raised Catholic. I'm Chinese and Polish. And so my Polish
00:07:10.320immigrant, Roman Catholic, you know, upbringing from my mother mixed with my father who has
00:07:18.380Buddhist practices, but as a way of life, not a religion. My current, I call it spiritual toolbox,
00:07:25.560which is what I use to help curate my offerings and I run a workshop on this as well and so it
00:07:31.620has some reclaimed faith practices around Catholicism it has some and I can talk at
00:07:40.220length about that but we'll just kind of pin that as one one aspect Buddhist practices and then
00:07:46.360more what I think of queer spiritual practices astrology and tarot and also following the moon
00:07:53.780as both a Chinese and an astrology practice so all of those kind of weave in to what I consider
00:08:01.360my spiritual offerings my spiritual practices I'm also really big on ritual in many ways
00:08:08.140altars and both in my Chinese ancestry and for femme divine goddesses for myself and and I
00:08:17.360also do energy work and so I think that kind of weaves through the many different aspects of
00:08:23.400spirituality for me so I do Reiki and energy clearings and healings. You said you were going
00:08:32.660to stick a pin in one thing I've got like five pins just from that paragraph there I want to
00:08:40.340I want to repeat something you said that your father's practice was a way of life not a religion
00:08:46.060and I think that's so interesting in these sort of polarized religious you know dogmatic times to
00:08:53.120think of whether you're religious or practicing a way of life. So I just wanted to sort of
00:08:58.660underscore that. And then you kind of answered my next question was that you use words like
00:09:02.920ministry, church, you use the word church. So that that's like to use the word church.
00:09:09.080It's true, even for queer. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, was the what was the decision behind1.00
00:09:17.320reclaiming that word? Absolutely. The reason is so much of the work that I do in terms of
00:09:25.880spirituality is shaped by the fact that I was raised Catholic and the healing that I need to
00:09:32.700do in order to regain my spiritual side and have access to my spirituality, which for 20 years of
00:09:40.720my life was filtered through the Catholic church. Um, it, I do that because it is, I always think
00:09:48.340you can kind of take the Catholic out of the church, but you can't, um, it is there, it is
00:09:53.760present. It is a filtered lens by the, for all of the work that I do. Um, and so I also, I, I bring
00:10:00.800that into it and I don't want folks to be surprised. Um, I don't ever want to hide that
00:10:06.340like aspect of the offerings that I give so that if someone, you know, especially from the
00:10:10.700queer and trans community were to come to queer church, which I will say, you know, it's an IG
00:10:15.960live offering that I do from House of Our Queer. It is largely, you know, me talking about social
00:10:20.680justice issues and sex positive, kink positive offerings, astrology and tarot. And at the same0.89
00:10:27.080times for me, that is church. Like church to me is coming together, talking about things, having
00:10:32.280community. And I wanted to both honor my first churches and in that space and in that idea,
00:10:39.200reclaim and reframe and kind of fuck with that. And also not to surprise folks that come through0.60
00:10:45.660when I might say, oh, this is how I'm re-imagining Lent this time. And just to hear that as a
00:10:51.200surprise. I think as, as both people who also grew up in the church and love some pieces of the
00:10:59.140ritual and of the uh anarchist hippie jesus um and have been damaged by some of the ideas about
00:11:06.780shame we're really sort of like enthusiastically full-bodied nodding at this idea of queering
00:11:11.920church um can you talk about shame since i bring it up i know you you talk a lot about the meeting0.75
00:11:19.180place of mind and body and and and healing that and and you know you talk about kinky confessionals
00:11:26.260this as like a space of like sharing desire and body and and I mean that's quite like0.99
00:11:32.540scandalous I guess for some practices of the church yeah absolutely I think both scandalous
00:11:39.960and can so deeply connected I think something that I'm really aware of and not afraid to point
00:11:47.280out is the connection between the deepness of devotion in many religious practices and also
00:11:54.860the deepness of desire. And so I think there's a lot more linked there, even though they're
00:12:00.780posed as opposites. And I think it's really important for us to not hide behind a smog
00:12:08.060of the idea that these things are incredibly separate. And so yeah, Kinky Confessionals is
00:12:14.100something that I launched with that in mind. I also think a lot of the work, if we're talking
00:12:17.960about healing spiritually for queer and trans folks, so much of that work is moving away from
00:12:24.160shame is looking at the face of what we've been told, you know, institutionally and by, you know,
00:12:29.440religious leaders for thousands of years and what we should be ashamed of, what our, you know,
00:12:36.240relationship to divine or higher powers or, you know, our own spiritual center needs to be filtered
00:12:42.740by and all of the pressure that we've been put under, you know, to perform in a certain way in
00:12:48.880order to be good, in order to be on the quote-unquote right path, you know, all of those
00:12:55.740things. So I absolutely think it's important to talk about. And so Kinky Confessionals is a play
00:13:01.440on reconciliation in the Catholic Church, where we are, you know, going and confessing our sins
00:13:07.240to this leader. And I use it as a space. Right now, it's just a virtual platform where folks can
00:13:12.920share, release. You know, I also really love to dig into the roots. I think, yes, we can reject
00:13:18.140anything, but if we can reclaim it, we can understand that it exists. We can look at it
00:13:23.500in its space and we can take the parts of it that work for us. And, and, and there's something,
00:13:29.340there's a healing part of that that I try to do in a lot of my work. And so Kinky Confessions is
00:13:34.600kind of looking right in the face of that and also honoring that there is value in sharing.
00:13:39.500There is value in having a way to release in having a community to be a part of in not holding
00:13:45.540on things that we feel around our desires, our kink, our sex, our relationships, who we are,
00:13:51.980how our bodies are, our relationship to ourselves, to our bodies, all of these things, you know,
00:13:57.160that we're walking around, especially as adults who, let's face it, we're not probably taught
00:14:01.260anything around sex ed. We're not probably taught around relationships in ways that, you know,
00:14:06.820were helpful or positive or comprehensive. And so, you know, as much as I do advocacy for the
00:14:12.740young ones and I want you know these systems to meet them where they are I'm aware that we as
00:14:18.480adults are still missing so much that we should have been taught the communities that we can be
00:14:23.100a part of and I believe in in that magic as part of spiritual healing yeah there's an amazing power
00:14:30.680in like a radical form of honesty that I think is like very self-healing but also mutually healing
00:14:38.140that vulnerability you know when you can express things and then people who maybe don't have the
00:14:44.140nerve to express it themselves can see it in you and you know relax into that into that part of
00:14:50.760themselves not feeling alone right so much you know the history of queer and trans folks um and
00:14:57.820our and shame even just being ourselves is because we were told like we don't exist in the world we
00:15:03.160aren't right in the world we don't see ourselves in you know healthy and thriving relationships
00:15:08.140in powerful spiritual leadership you know all as a part of spiritual communities or religious
00:15:13.600communities you know so much of that erasure you know kind of can hold and I think I believe in
00:15:18.940queer and trans ancestors I think like queer and trans folks today we are you know carrying on this
00:15:24.400other chosen family lineage and so that the ancestral you know history and that we're
00:15:29.880carrying around from those that have come before us and both honoring what they've done and just
00:15:35.480understanding that we're still working through that. I think even in 2021, even with where
00:15:41.640things are today, there's still so much internal things for us to release. And so on top of that
00:15:48.120to say, I also have a power play dynamic desire, or I also want to have a non-monogamous relationship,
00:15:54.720Or I also feel like this desire of something that I know I shouldn't or feel like I shouldn't, you know, those things can be so hard to navigate.
00:16:03.600And often when we're talking about that or if you see like sex positive, kink positive spaces, they're not talking about the queer and trans community.
00:16:11.340We have to do our own labor again to figure out, OK, how am I at the intersections of these things?
00:16:17.180How do I put in a little extra labor so that this applies to me and I feel OK and a little less alone?0.64
00:16:23.020And so I just want to be able to have a space where I can both understand what's coming up for folks so that as I'm sharing in Queer Church and I'm providing resources and I do kinky affirmations based on things that have been submitted into the Kinky Confessionals.0.60
00:16:37.320And so that's just also a way for me to make sure that what I'm offering is what folks need and to curate that as well.
00:16:43.920you said earlier and I've heard this in a couple different ways from a few different people but
00:16:49.860I'm really interested in your perspective on this that astrology and tarot are queer
00:16:54.660can you like defend that thesis for us for a minute I absolutely can and I also want to yeah
00:17:03.840we don't own it but for the community and we didn't start it and I like but um for the queer
00:17:10.900community, especially at this time, astrology and tarot have become really common and really
00:17:18.420appealing and like mainstream, if you will, within, you know, the LGBTQ community across
00:17:25.520the country, at least I can say, for spiritual access. And it is a common language that you can
00:17:33.420use in order to talk about spirituality, which is something that, you know, our community hasn't
00:17:39.160really had before and it's I think one of the reasons it's so popular is because you know it
00:17:45.480is this way because one because queer and trans folks like everybody else want to have some
00:17:52.880spiritual answers and some spiritual centers and we want like everybody else to just know that
00:17:58.880we're like doing this life thing right you know we want that connection we want that community
00:18:04.180and um and that type of guidance and astrology and terror are some of the only practices that
00:18:09.580haven't been institutionalized in this country in a way that has forcefully disconnected us or told
00:18:16.820us we're not a part of it or that many of us in the community are like holding um pain and
00:18:22.220rejection and shame around and so i think that's why it's particularly popular for this
00:18:27.760can you talk more about magic and desire and possible futures you know the desire that builds
00:29:42.320and just like the air was just like sucked out of the room it was just you know my young people are
00:29:48.040like yes young people you know are learning about the world they are in a place in relationship to
00:29:53.160the world where they are open to understanding that the diversity that exists in the world is
00:29:58.340something they have space for and something they don't have to run counter to the ways that they
00:30:04.120have been told to think or the things they've seen and being reinforced and you know with us it is
00:30:10.420we have unlearning to do. We have a lot of our own things and the protectiveness that we might
00:30:16.560feel also for what we consider developmentally appropriate, which I find, which I could talk
00:30:23.060about all day, but we'll not go into at this time. But, you know, there is a measure, there's a
00:30:27.960measure of that for sure, especially around things like, you know, adult relationship structures or
00:30:32.380the way I talk about kink and sex and desire and consent. You know, I have a different way to talk
00:30:36.640about young people, for example, for things like that. But when I'm looking at the systems of the
00:30:41.560world and when I'm talking about, you know, honoring our bodies and honoring our intuitions
00:30:45.980and designing our own relationships, you know, that's something that really young people
00:30:51.440understand and I think appreciate when you can speak to them directly. Yeah, I think this like
00:30:57.500major argument of the 80s and 90s counter argument was this pearl clutching, like,
00:31:03.140how am I supposed to explain this to my children and it's like your children get it you you're the
00:31:09.700one who doesn't get it so I don't know how you're going to explain it because you don't understand
00:31:13.360it but like children are just more open to different ways because like you said they haven't
00:31:18.820been calcified into the status quo yet right so they're like cool this person does things that way
00:31:25.140so do you find it's like almost even easier to teach children about these like anti-status quo
00:31:31.260concepts. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think the, the tricky thing about teaching quote unquote
00:31:39.060children is the system of which it is to go through an educational system and a curriculum
00:31:44.280and a school that has a bunch of adults monitoring it to get to the young people.
00:31:49.000So that's, that's the advocacy work that I do. So I, a lot of the work I do right now actually
00:31:54.100call is focused on parent advocacy and parent education and family education. You know, I think
00:32:00.120the thing is, nobody wants to have their child come home and say something to them that they
00:32:05.420weren't expecting and that they don't know how to talk about and that they don't know how to answer.
00:32:09.400Like, that isn't fun for anybody. And so, you know, I think when these changes happen,
00:32:14.140one of the things I do when I work with schools or when I work with organizations is, you know,
00:32:18.180how do we make sure that all the folks that are here are met where they are and they can feel a
00:32:23.360part of the change that's happening and calling them in and helping them have that education to
00:32:28.180say like this is what's happening this is how we're saying it and this is why and like invite
00:32:33.300them in to be a part of that so that we aren't feeling like things are you know no one wants to
00:32:39.140feel like left behind no one wants to feel like they the things they know aren't there or that
00:32:43.840they can't protect you know their their young people in whatever ways that is i just think that
00:32:49.080is um there's it just takes a lot more time and effort um but i think bringing families in along
00:32:55.640is actually one of the ways that this work becomes um actually culture shifting actually
00:33:02.080sustainable because we can say anything we want to a young person but if they go home and they
00:33:06.540hear the complete opposite you know what we've done is just created two different worlds for a
00:33:10.500young person and you know that that doesn't help them but I will say just as if but like it's fun
00:33:16.160to me because one yes I worked with young people for so long especially like I said kindergarten
00:33:20.800so I do know it's possible and um I was a young person like I was a kindergartner who like was
00:33:30.020crushing on my girlfriend and so like when people are like they don't know they can't know they are
00:33:34.740too young to hear this like I know that's not true I know I love to imagine what my world would be0.57
00:33:40.640like you know if I was in kindergarten being me and knowing that you know biracial queer lesbians1.00
00:33:47.400exist and can have jobs and can make magic and can be people in the world like that um i don't
00:33:54.900even know what that might have done for me i just i do like to think that i had a dear friend come
00:34:02.400over yesterday for dinner uh who i hadn't seen in like about a decade and he brought his five-year-old
00:34:08.000and his five-year-old and my three-year-old had like dinner party conversation that consisted of
00:34:13.400the five-year-old being like girls can marry girls you know I was like yeah totally they can
00:34:19.220she's like but they can't marry paper it's like no not right now as far as I know
00:34:25.760amazing yes there is an Instagram account I follow that's like overheard at snack time
00:34:33.500amazing so perfect like that yeah I mean I watch my three-year-old uh invent the world
00:34:43.080daily so you know you talk about like the the the possible worlds um that we can kind of find
00:34:52.040in ourselves we come back to a place without shame come back to bodies with kind of love and
00:34:57.740play um i love that you describe um the house of our queer as like a spiritual play space i love
00:35:04.320that you specifically choose that word and that kind of modality that is so creationy right so
00:35:13.780creative but i and i watched this kid do it she's she's she's just like putting concepts together
00:35:19.220all day long inventing the world as she figures it out so nothing nothing really shocks her
00:35:26.760I absolutely relate to that five-year-old when it comes to House of Our Queer and the imagining of a queer spiritual play space and, you know, faith space and organization that, you know, focuses on queer and trans folks, especially POC, you know, queer and trans folks and community.
00:35:50.900I think I'm trying, I'm doing what I can draw from, and I'm, you know, doing what I can in partnership. But there is an infinite amount of places that this could go. I feel really excited about that. That is why I call it a play space. I am inviting folks into like the learning that I'm doing and the sharing that I'm at as I'm going.
00:36:14.800and there's just been so much space between lgbtq folks in my community and religion and
00:36:25.660spirituality and faith and my community and so the idea of getting to bridge them together
00:36:31.240is so powerful to me and also yeah i think it's it still has so many unknowns and so much like
00:36:40.080space for working. Um, Flora, since you're here, did you, did you want to ask any questions? You
00:36:47.820don't have to, I can edit it out, but I wanted to invite you to, if you want it. Um, no, I don't
00:36:54.380have any questions. Um, Bex, I just learned of you in the email that Amy and Risa sent out this
00:37:01.680morning. So I have nothing prepared, but I can only say, um, that I agree with so much of what
00:37:08.840you are saying because I have such a similar experience, especially with my religion of
00:37:18.400origin being the same as yours. And, you know, I think we need a lot of DIY people to take what
00:37:27.260is good and fashion it for them because the church is very good at hitting people over the
00:37:35.340head with a scepter telling them what's bad and uh driving people away and um so i think that
00:37:42.580what you're doing is is very needed um and um yeah so so i i'm just excited to learn so i i don't
00:37:52.160have any any questions to formulate yet but i'm happy to to be here and so yeah thanks for being
00:37:58.300here and thanks for contributing that yeah yeah and that that does make me think so much
00:38:05.640because they asked me kind of earlier you know why church like why bring church into it and then also
00:38:11.460like what does spirituality mean and I think that's one of the reasons I do I'm I have been
00:38:18.640through such a journey with my catholic background it really the church was um the place where I
00:38:25.920learned social justice activism where I learned like standing up community at ritual you know
00:38:31.720standing up for um you know marginalized folks and the ways that they deemed who was marginalized
00:38:38.080but those things they're just so much I learned um from the church and I call the pain place is
00:38:45.760is what I call when I came out and when I left the church and when I felt the rejection and
00:38:51.980it is a really intense place especially if like you have um you know the church starts so young
00:39:00.160especially with like catholicism so the it leaving the church wasn't like stopping going to church on
00:39:06.680Sundays like for me leaving the church was reimagining myself in the world reimagining
00:39:12.960where to go in dark times what I did before meals before bed you know on holidays and because
00:39:21.920the United States is so Christian focused. So many of our holidays are focused on Christian
00:39:30.180rooted religions. And so even if you're like, okay, I'm going to move away from here.1.00
00:39:34.880There's just many multiple times a year to remember that you're not a part of something
00:39:39.720that other people are a part of, that you're no longer welcome in something that you are.
00:39:44.060It's like the X you can't get away from. I thought we were moving. There's no place in
00:39:49.900the city, I can go. So I'm not seeing, you know, your holiday and your space and your rituals. And
00:39:56.120you know, I, I call that the pain plays for me that lasted five years. That was five years of
00:40:03.060digging into queer, pretty much only community and social justice activism and saying like,0.59
00:40:10.080here I am and my spirituality is over there and I'm never going to need that again. And I,
00:40:14.980you know, fuck you. And like, I've never liked you anyway. And everyone who liked you and1.00
00:40:19.120all of the things you know you do when you're like going through a bed breakup and you're like
00:40:22.400life is like just upturned and you don't want to be a part of it and and I had that and I needed
00:40:27.980that and I took my time and I encourage folks to take your time and and then kind of dug myself
00:40:35.960back and realized after a while and what I call like the reclaiming rephrasing renaming stage
00:40:42.660you know I was like I will never pray and then like before bed I'd be like thank you universe
00:40:47.420for looking over me and making sure I'm fine. And just all of these ways, you know, I loved,
00:40:53.460I became the biggest like commercial Christmas person. I was like, this isn't about Jesus. I
00:40:58.020just love cheer, you know, and this just like these ways, these many, many, many ways that I
00:41:02.640eventually was able to realize both that what I was doing was rooted in some of the things I had
00:41:09.400learned and been raised in. And also that I wasn't sorry about it, that actually what I realized,
00:41:15.680particularly when I moved out to the West Coast and I live in Oakland now and there is a difference
00:41:22.040in religion and spirituality out here than in the you know I was from Massachusetts I was living in
00:41:27.300New York you know the anti-religious folks are in relationship to religion it's it's so rooted
00:41:33.240there that it's like I either am or I'm not but I'm not because of it and you know the West Coast
00:41:37.660from the folks that I met was just kind of like yeah I me and everyone I know and all the white0.86
00:41:44.720queers in Oregon and the West Coast have only ever needed hugging trees for generations. And0.99
00:41:51.100I don't know what you're talking. And it just, no shame on that, but like, I really felt,
00:41:57.200I really realized I had a mirror to my face when I moved out here to see that actually for me,
00:42:04.040and I think for a lot of POC in the queer and trans community, and there are a lot of folks
00:42:09.420thought um you know immigrant family just there are just so many other folks in this larger idea
00:42:15.580of what we call lgbtq and who we call the you know queer and trans community that we actually
00:42:21.140either were secretly already a part of religions or having spiritual and religious practices and
00:42:27.860not bringing it into these communities and parts and friendships and relationships and parts of
00:42:31.720our lives um or we were cutting ourselves off from supports that actually we needed and we could use
00:42:38.060to help our mental health and to help our ritual and to help our sense of community.
00:42:44.660And that we were sometimes using, I think, when we talk about queer religions like astrology and
00:42:50.020tarot, if they're not being done by folks that have an understanding of religion, that have an
00:42:54.700understanding of ritual, that have an understanding for the depth and beauty of higher powers and
00:43:01.800being a part of something that's bigger than yourself. I think that's why we're seeing so
00:43:06.760much sun sign stereotyping and using these tools that are incredibly expansive to put ourselves in
00:43:13.860boxes or to create fear for ourselves and I really you know wanted to use the work that I do
00:43:20.840and the offerings that I have to try to like meld all these things and also help us to really
00:43:25.620be thoughtful about how we engage in these practices. Can I respond to that? I know you
00:43:32.740Are guys going to edit this? But I just wanted to say I was really touched when you said that you learned from the church about social justice issues, because I feel like, at least from my experience, which in some ways I feel like is very similar.
00:43:47.580But in this instance, it was I'm going to say the opposite in one sense, because I went to Catholic schools for most of my formative life and my my my family is Catholic.
00:43:59.300and so there were things that I was learning about the theology that I absolutely loved
00:44:05.260but I was in a very very very ad infinitum very racist environment and as an African American
00:44:15.460it wasn't that I was turned off by the religion it was that I was turned off by everything that0.70
00:44:20.100the people around me were saying and doing who allegedly practiced that religion which was an
00:44:25.480opposite. So it was more that I was rejecting the people and I refused to go to church for years and
00:44:30.640years and years and years and years as well, but it was not really so much a rejection of the
00:44:35.700religion. And, and, you know, one day I just sort of like wandered back into a church. So
00:44:39.700for me, there was always this, this very hard dichotomy of that. I mean, I'm from the South,
00:44:45.160Amy and Lisa know where I live. I live in the South, which I don't know about other places,
00:44:50.260But here, Catholic schools or parochial schools become like the default mechanism of segregation.
00:44:56.160So if you're a black person in that, you're violating de facto segregation.
00:45:06.940So for me, it's like, yeah, I did learn all of the good things about religion.
00:45:09.620I like the religion, but it was the people that forced me out.
00:45:13.260And going back, which I've done, even though I'm in this space as well, it's like, how can I put it?
00:45:20.640I just I just decided I'm not going to let other people take away something from me that that I liked.
00:45:25.880So but anyway, I just wanted to share that.
00:45:30.260Thank you so much for sharing. And I will say I have I never I went to a public school.
00:45:35.060So the church for me was just my like Sunday community center.
00:45:38.960and um I've heard from folks that went to Catholic schools there's there's so much so much more
00:45:45.240teaching it's so much more to unlearn and you know depending on the communities so um I I won't dig
00:45:52.440now into the racial identities around the Catholic church and the many things in which I would like
00:45:57.460to talk to you about that perhaps we can connect on another time um but what I what I want to you
00:46:03.760know just highlight from that is I absolutely understand like the difference between the
00:46:11.460teachings around the church and then the communities in the church and that's absolutely
00:46:17.780like part of what I want to do is create spiritual community again and we don't have to believe the
00:46:25.480same things or have the same I think it's actually better if we believe different things have
00:46:29.600different practices, have different rituals. But I do miss that idea of, you know, coming together
00:46:35.560and saying, like, I want to wrestle with this. I want to think about this, this way that I'm small
00:46:42.100and this way that I'm big and this way that I have agency in this way that I have no idea what I'm
00:46:47.600doing. And how can we do that together and be here for each other and look at the folks that have
00:46:53.540been here and the witches of our past and the the holidays that they were doing and um the rituals
00:47:00.500they were a part of and the spells we can cast together and how do we bring all of that um in
00:47:05.800community with some kind of discipline to be honest with some kind of actual like follow-through
00:47:10.880in ways that um with i'm in in many times when folks do say like spirituality and i don't often
00:47:18.180find that ritual and that discipline that I actually need in order to to call this something
00:47:23.920that in order to get the benefit of it for my mental health and for my my life that I was getting
00:47:30.240yeah Fleur I love that you said you have gone back to being a part of that community
00:47:37.620because you won't let it be taken from you I think that's incredibly like thrilling and powerful
00:47:45.380um i interviewed someone um this week and she's not a doctor yet but she will be a doctor soon
00:47:52.920she's writing her phd dissertation on black witch identities and hoodoo and conjure and she's uh
00:48:00.500like a second generation witch and she said she's realizing that she thinks the witch is the identity
00:48:07.040and the religions are the toolkit so hoodoo and ifa and that that and and christianity like these
00:48:16.020are toolkits that we can have because they can't take them from us and we can still be
00:48:21.680which is if we fucking want to how do you feel about the the term which
00:48:26.280backs you use it what is it what does it mean for you yeah absolutely that resonates really0.63
00:48:33.380strongly with me around it being an identity. I actually have a workshop called my spiritual
00:48:38.620toolbox and I go through these different aspects and I do think of them as tools, just ways to
00:48:44.940interact. Um, and like I said, have that balance between manifesting and directing our lives and,
00:48:52.120um, asking for support and feeling small when we need to. And so all of the tools that I have,
00:48:58.140I try to blend with that. And for me, being a witch is being really in tune with that, is using energy work and my understanding and my continually honing ability to tap into the moon, to tap into the stars, to tap into my ancestors and my spirit guides and the gods and goddesses that I'm curating and saints that I curate, you know, practices with and relationships with.
00:49:26.600And so that when I create offerings and I write spell prayers for the new moons and
00:49:32.560their release, you know, my ability to do that, I consider that witchly because I put
00:49:38.960in the work and that practice to have the things that I'm doing, hopefully be coming